Page 59 of The Blood of a Baron

Not halting quick enough, she bumped into the front of him, then quickly fumbled her hands upward to push herself away. A step backward and she looked up at him, her eyes still daggers. “You know who killed Morty and you didn’t tell me.”

She was pulling away from him.

Whether he’d wanted it or not—whether he deserved it or not—he’d had her back. Had her in his arms, her smile upon his face, her heart cracked open to him last night. It’d been so much more than the carnal coupling in his townhouse—that had been their bodies raw with need and too much energy between them. Last night had been more—he’d had the tiniest bit of her soul back. His again.

But now she was pulling away, fighting it.

Probably because she knew, deep down, there were still truths she didn’t know.

He couldn’t lie to her.

Not anymore.

She needed to know. Needed to know this from him before she learned it later and it destroyed everything.

His hand ran across his face. “Aye. I do know who is behind it. Only since yesterday, but I do know.”

Her hand went to her forehead, her forefinger and thumb squeezing the bridge of her nose. “Why? Why—after last night—last night I thought you were finally telling me what I needed to know. I finally thought you weren’t lying to me anymore. You had me believing and now I’m right back to where I can’t trust you. I never could.”

She stepped to the side, starting to move around him.

Wes jumped in front of her, stopping her motion. “I didn’t tell you because it didn’t matter.”

“How could that possibly not matter?”

His jaw set hard, his words went wooden in his mouth. “I didn’t tell you because the truth is I killed Morton.”

Her jaw dropped, yet no words escaped.

His breath held, stinging his lungs and she staggered a step backward. Another. Another.

Her hand moved, slow, trembling as it landed on her chest. One more step and she stopped, horror contorting the lines on her face. “You what?”

“I killed him.”

She gasped a breath. Started to talk. No sound and she had to gasp another breath. “Wes—no, you couldn’t have.”

His veins froze, his stare unable to veer from her face as much as he wanted to look away. “I didn’t slide that blade across Morton’s face, but I killed him just the same—I knew what was out there waiting for him in the night, what could happen if I let him walk alone down that street. And it did happen, just as I knew it would. I failed to protect him when I’d sworn I would do so. I killed him.”

Her eyes glassy, her head shook, disbelief making her words vibrate. “You knew what could happen to him and you let him go?”

“I did.”

“Wes…how…how could you do that?”

He’d known the answer the whole time. He’d tried to blame it on his fatigue with Morton’s drinking and gambling and whores, but that wasn’t the whole of it.

Not by far.

During the last weeks he’d tried to wrestle the reason of it out of his mind. Attempted to ignore it. Refused to admit to it. But he could never escape it.

His eyes closed, his head hanging. A breath and he lifted his chin, his look centering on her green-flecked amber eyes. “It was May tenth, Laney.”

“May tenth….May tenth…” The date whispered from her tongue, her lips barely moving.

He exhaled with a nod. “We would have been married seven years on that day.”

Her head shook, her eyes closing to him. “But you forgave him—he said you forgave him.”

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